Marsh Hawk Press is a poetry collective. Our books' forms and sensibilities assimilate modern and post-modern traditions but expand from these without political or aesthetic bias.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

THREE QUESTIONS: MICHAEL RERICK

Marsh Hawk Press offers a
"Three Questions" Series for its authors to discuss individual titles
-- an index to the Series is available HERE. We are pleased to
present this Q&A with Michael Rerick and his book which received the 2008
Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize:

While writing the book I
was thinking about large themes like art and beauty, those sometimes taboo
poetic subjects, and wondering how I could tackle them. I felt as though it
would be too obvious to have poems or sections dealing directly with, say, art,
so juggling a set of concrete and abstract notions made the most sense to me at
the time. Poems in each section consider, then, art in Sculptures, the artist
and beauty in X-Ray, personal history in Objects, a History, travel in Post
Clips, and language in Preservation/Excavations. I don’t know if my approach is
obvious, and in a way I hope it isn’t, but I did have fun tackling these themes
in an abstract-concrete way.

2)Please
share some responses to your book that’s surprised you, or made you happy or
disappointed.

A friend taught my book in
her undergraduate poetry workshop and I visited the class to discuss my work.
To be honest, it was flattering as well as a bit terrifying. I was honored to
have so many people consider the book all at once, but I also felt uncomfortable
discussing my work while in the hot seat. Still, the book created the
experience, and I’m happy to be able to do things like this because of it.

Also, my family read the
book. Or parts of it. And that is saying something.

3) If you had to choose a favorite poem or a poem to
highlight from the book, which one would you choose and why?

I think the opening poem
really sets the linguistic and thematic mood for what the book does as a whole.
It also contains the book’s title. So, it’s a nutshell: